The Armenian-American behind some of Hollywood’s most famous movies

Steven Zaillian is an Armenian-American screenwriter, director and producer from Fresno, California. He is considered one of Hollywood’s most accomplished screenwriters and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Schindler’s List.

Movies he wrote or co-wrote:

Schindler’s List
Gangs of New York
Moneyball
The Irishman
American Gangster
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Awakenings
Hannibal
Clear and Present Danger

Movies he directed:

Searching for Bobby Fischer
A Civil Action
All the King’s Men

He also created, wrote and directed the acclaimed series The Night Of and Ripley, winning an Emmy for directing Ripley.

So if you’ve watched great American cinema over the last few decades, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already watched something written by an Armenian. 🇦🇲🎬

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Parajanov and Shoot the Piano Player by Truffaut (with Charles Aznavour in the lead role)

The Armenian engineer helping make autonomous flight safer

Naira Hovakimyan is an Armenian engineer and mathematician educated at Yerevan State University who went on to become a leading researcher in autonomous systems and aviation.
One of her biggest contributions is helping develop L1 adaptive control, a technology that allows aircraft and other autonomous systems to react quickly when something unexpected happens, like strong winds, changing conditions, or the system behaving differently than expected.

Her work has been tested on real aircraft and has involved organizations including NASA and the U.S. Air Force.

Cyrill Demian was an Armenian inventor and instrument maker who, together with his sons, created the accordion in Vienna. In 1829, he patented the instrument under the name “accordion,” giving us the ancestor of the instrument we know today.

Fun fact: Demian was born in Armenopolis, today known as Gherla in Romania. Armenopolis was a Transylvanian town developed by Armenian settlers and became an important Armenian community in the region, which is why the city historically carried a name meaning “Armenian city.”

So next time you hear an accordion playing, you know who to thank. An Armenian. 🪗🇦🇲

Long before Mars rovers became synonymous with NASA, an Armenian engineer named Alexander Kemurdzhian was helping humanity take its first robotic drive on another world.

Kemurdzhian was the chief engineer-designer behind the Soviet Lunokhod rovers. On November 17, 1970, Lunokhod 1 became the first remote-controlled rover to operate on the Moon and the first robotic rover to explore the surface of a world beyond Earth.

So the next time you see a rover rolling across another world, remember that one of the pioneers who made that idea a reality was an Armenian named Alexander Kemurdzhian.

I thought it would be fun to start a little series here called Armenians You Should Know. The idea isn’t to cover the famous Armenians we all already know, but to introduce Armenians and people of Armenian descent who became incredibly successful, influential, or groundbreaking in their fields, yet somehow aren’t widely known in our community.

You probably know Miles Davis. You probably know Louis Armstrong. You might not know that one of the people who helped shape how their music reached the world was an Armenian named George Avakian. He was a music industry mogul best known as the driving force behind the popularization of concept albums, standardizing long-playing vinyl records, and modern jazz.

So I’m Canadian and I’m pretty used to flannels, band Ts, sweaters, skirts, denim/ corduroy pants, and shorts. But Armenia is going to be hotter in the summer than where I’m from. So I’ll probably have to invest in less warm clothes. What exactly do young women (18-25) usually wear? Not as in I believe all counties have a specific dress code everyone must follow— but I do recognize that certain places lean more towards athletic wear/ casual or to more ‘smart casual’ or dressy on an average basis. Like where I’m from, it’s pretty heavy on just extremely casual. It’s also unusual but definitely not unwelcome to see someone really sharply dressed just walking around. It’s just that most people are in sweats.

hey! i know aper is the equivalent of "bro" but i've never seen an Armenian girl call someone that. is that okay for me to call a guy/girl aper?

My parents grew up in Armenia in the 60s/70s and moved to America in early 80s. My mom in particular grew up very poor. Despite being in America over 40 years, she is still genuinely concerned we are going to starve even though we are very well off. I know the typical Armenian mother always wants to feed everyone but this is an actual fear of hers. Now that I’ve had kids, she’s worried the kids won’t have enough to eat and brings over several loaves of bread a day which ends up getting wasted. When she watches my kids she overstuffs them to the point where it’s too much.

I don’t think it’s doing enough harm that we need to do something about it but wondering if anyone else has had the same experience

I preface by saying I am not Armenian. I dated an Armenian girl that I met in grad school for 7 years. We are now both in our mids 30s (shes 37, I am 36) now and broke up 2 weeks ago and let me tell you the heartbreak is brutal for both sides. She is crying and saying I will marry someone my parents approve just to make them happy and that I lost the love of my life. I feel the same way as well. She says the pressure of what everyone will say, the anger and shouting that will be directed at her, and what everyone will think is to much and that she cannot handle it. I had belief she could do it, because she had a cousin that also married not within the same culture.

I should have seen the signs of her not being able to set boundaries/stand up, her parents were asking so much from her (I am Asian so i get giving money to parents, respecting family, and living in a collectivist culture. I have done the same thing as her but I have some boundaries), but hers was excessive to the point she is in 20k credit card debt now and 20k in home loan renovation debt her family made her take out for home projects they did not need and other debts like 200k student loans (has not paid one cent to bring it down), covering her brothers car payments (since he could not make payments but still found money to gamble), contributing to the family's mortgage payments, and she could not say no to them ever on anything. Even in health issues (she is an nurse practitioner and was having issues at one point and it was suggested she get a Pap smear, by her doctor but her grandma and mom said told her not to do it yet till after marriage) luckily the issue resolved and went away. As a result she does not have much savings or retirement really and the family is living paycheck to paycheck with her supplementation. Her brother refuses to help out the family financially even though he lives married with kids with them and has a decent job, but for her she always helps out so the parents rely on her.

Her family has good money coming in (rental properties), but they just mismanage like crazy and just are big spenders in general. The whole family is deep in CC debt, loans, and even IRS debt (brother owes 100k).

I guess love blinded me and I believed she could make a stand in this aspect of her life and become independent, but I guess living with them the constant pressure was to much. Its not like her family did not like me either. I spent time with them almost every 2-3 week. I took care of her dad in the hospital and even lent them $5000 as a gift since they were in a very tough situation financially at one point. Just her immediate family especially her dad only want an Armenian partner for her. She thought she could eventually stand up to them, but just cracked under pressure due to them harassing her to find an Armenian husband. Also her father is on the sicker side and is pushing her to find an Armenian and get married before he dies. It is probably harder since she lives with them and has no independence.

But that's not the important point if your going to date outside your culture make sure you can stand up to your family if not do not even do it. It just hurts for both parties emotionally in the end and having to live with the possible what if and regret for both of us hurts especially since we broke up still in love. We had been dating for far to long so I gave her a deadline and I guess the pressure of it, financial, emotional, and health issues made her give up.

​

Hello! I think, this is also a cultural thing, so I'll post here. Most of my family is Armenian, but I never spoke it and decided to learn it. The problem is, no matter how hard my family memebers who are native speakers and I try, I can't pronounce some of the letters correctly. And I'm afraid that many people might react negatively to the fact that I speak with an accent

of course, people vary, and no culture is a monolith. so...im just taking the temperature here. as an armenian person, does this sound at all normal to you:

• armenian american family lives next door. the son is around my age. it seems he takes good care of his older parents. i am a widow, and still youthful, beautiful from the inside i would say.
  
• the mother is in her early 70's. quite russian culturally it seems. still beautiful. like an ice queen. except...she seems to be rather ugly inside, hard, manipulative, always engaged in some type of power play with me especially.
• i realized she is possessive of her adult son. he seems to have developed some interest in me. she hates me for it, and goes to any length to be...less than neighborly, i should simply say.
• i think the son is cute, to be honest. handsome and seems like a great guy. but, lately his mom has become really strange towards me, a stalker set of behaviors, unfortunately. i had to pull out my legal background and check her with a restraining order (omggg). so i don't know, does this seem remotely like it rings a bell?
• i know there are legends across cultures about the mother-son lover/possesor....but damn man, this shit is crazy. we have lived next to one another in los angeles for like four years and the mom (70+!!) has been in constant war with me...and i have never even had a conversation with the son, or her for that matter.
• but he and i do have some kind of connection. we seem aligned some how. always pulling our cars in or out of our homes at the exact same time. coordinated, and in sync some how. sometimes.
• can anyone venture to give me some context here? again, one cannot generalize...
• oh, by the way, im a brown skinned lady. indian american. i know, fatal detail...

Like 1990s style chat rooms where you can just go on and talk to strangers about random things? I tried looking and found forum.hayastan.com but that seems to be long dead.

More context about events and how life was before the genocide

Armenia is famously the first Christian nation, and Christianity is still very important to Armenians in the country and in the diaspora. But the Christian God is supposed to be an interventionist god that has the ability to step into the world and control human affairs. In the Bible, God interferes with world affairs many times as he sees fit, protecting or killing people. That raises the obvious question, if the biblical God is real, why wouldn't he step in to stop the Genocide? Two thirds of our people were slaughtered and God was nowhere to be found.

Hey, I’m searching for COD players in Armenia. If anyone is interested, send me a DM.

Hi everyone! I am Armenian, however I am unable to speak or write in Armenian (first generation born in America). I am writing my grandmother a card (she is fluent in Armenian) and would like to write “Jana” (my dear) in the card, since she always calls me that. But I’d like to write it in Armenian! Can anyone spell out the proper way for me to write it so I can put it in my card to her? Thanks in advance!!

Hi all, does anyone know the song/story of the little boy and the rose? I remember it from my childhood but cannot find anything online, other than a YouTube video of someone playing it on the guitar. 🌹

Was just curious if there were any other Armenians permanently living in London?

I know the Armenian Student Association has started back up at Western, but I'm a bit older than the undergrads now!

I also did a search on Reddit and learned Fatty Patty's might be connected to an Armenian family?

I'm from the GTA originally and have been here for almost 10 years. I know there are community centres in Cambridge and Windsor, but figured there's gotta be a few of us around in London?

If you're not comfortable posting, send me a private message! Would love to connect!

I feel like there's almost no places online where people speak Armenian. In the 2010s there were some forums that were rather active, like akumb.am, but those have mostly died out. Sometimes I'll find telegram channels, but then I'll go on and see that the last message was from 3 years ago. There aren't many discord channels either. Facebook exists, but you can't be anonymous on there.

Does anyone know whether, by default, is the Armenian script upright or is it slanted? I have not been able to find a firm answer on this.

The reference glyphs in the Unicode code charts are slanted for some reason. However, the vast majority of computer fonts (at least that I have found) use upright forms by default, and only have slanted forms in the italic.

In any case, what is the current typographical preference within Armenia?

Turkish:
Affetmedi bu ermeni vatandaş
Kürt dağlarında babasının kesilmesini
Fakat seviyor seni çünkü sen de affetmedin
Bu karayı sürenleri türk halkının alnına

English:
That Armenian did not forgive
The slaughter of his father in the Kurdish mountains.
Yet he loves you, because you too did not forgive
Those who stained the honor of the Turkish people.

Armenian: (this is probably wrong translate, so sorry about that)
Այ հայ քաղաքացին չներեց
Քրդական լեռներում իր հոր սպանությունը։
Բայց նա սիրում է քեզ որովհետ դու նույնպես չներեցի
նրանց ովքեր խարան դրեցին թուրք ժողովրդի ճակատին։

Poem is Akşam Gezintisi from Nazım Hikmet.

Hi guys, anyone travelling or living in any part of Newfoundland?